Students in the Bellevue School District are getting their chance to crack the code of computer language this week as part of the national Hour of Code.

With the help of Microsoft, a founding support of Code.org, a leading partner of the Hour of Code and a sponsor of Computer Science Education Week, the software company is attempting to get 100 million youth to try their hand at computer coding.

While current and former employees have been volunteering as teachers through the Technology Education And Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program, it was the students in those classes leading others through this week’s coding program.

Bellevue High school students, senior Louis Hong and sophomore Ripley Ryan, each have spent the last several years learning various coding languages through the TEALS program and on their own.

Both said they aspire to help teach others the benefits of coding.

“My dream is to create software that millions of people will use someday,” Hong said. “It’s amazing to watch the materialization of an idea into an actual product.”

Ryan said his love of computer coding comes from the challenging puzzles and finally get the right piece to fit.

“I want other people to experience that feeling,” he said. “After you’ve spent a lot of time on a problem and the satisfaction that comes from solving it.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Hong and Ryan led fellow classmates through a series of coding challenges using animated characters from “Angry Birds” and Disney’s “Frozen.”

According to Hong, the program simplified computer coding in an easy to digest and understand method.

One of the students’ TEALS teaching assistants, David Broman, who worked at Microsoft for two decades before leaving to pursue his interest in teaching, said the program allowed anyone to learn basic coding.

“It doesn’t matter how much background you have, the tutorial is completely graphical, without any actual coding at all,” he said. “People have this idea that coding is just writing lines and lines, but it’s so much more.”

Now in his third year of TEALS at Bellevue High School, Broman said he and Andrew Smith, a current Microsoft employee, have combined their efforts in ways they never thought possible. And the student reaction was beyond what they could imagine.

The first year they taught one class, lessons were planned out a week or so in advance. Now they can reflect back on the lessons and Smith is able to incorporate his work experience within the lesson plans.

“I’m able to use similar techniques that I was just using as the job just hours before,” Smith said. “It lets the students see the real-life application.”

Started in 2010, TEALS now operates in 46 schools throughout Washington and is taught in 131 programs in 18 different states and Washington, D.C.

Each class is co-taught with a classroom teacher, which also gives them the opportunity to learn the specific course material and potentially incorporate it into their lesson plans giving students an even deeper understanding of what’s being taught, according to Microsoft.

Broman said many of their students are also participating in this Saturday’s Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Association programming competition. The 16-problem event challenges teams of three to solve coding problems as quickly as possible.

This year roughly half the students in the two classes combined are slated to compete, he said.

“Coding is paramount to society,” Broman said. “More and more software is helping us control more and more of our lives and there’s more and more job opportunities not getting filled. Hopefully these classes will build the next generation of coders.”

For more information about the Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Association programming competition visit www.pscsta.org.